Edgar Allen Poe and Cryptography

Author: R. Morelli

Like other literary figures of his time, Edgar Allan Poe had an
intense interest in cryptography. Although he never revealed his
methods, Poe believed that breaking ciphers and other enigmas was
required the straightforward application of reason and logic.

In terms of his cryptographic interests, Poe is best known for his
famous challenge, issued in December 1839 in Alexander's Weekly
Messenger, that he could solve any simple substitution cipher
that readers of the magazine cared to submit. A simple substitution cipher is one in
which the same symbol stands for the same letter of the alphabet in
the concealed message. Poe's challenge also insisted that the
cryptograms preserve the word boundaries.

In his own words, Poe's challenge is stated as follows:

"It would be by no means a labor lost to show how great a degree of
rigid method enters into enigma-guessing. This may sound oddly; but it
is not more strange than the well know fact that rules really exist,
by means of which it is easy to decipher any species of hieroglyphical
writing -- that is to say writing where, in place of alphabetical
letters, any kind of marks are made use of at random. For example, in
place of A put % or any other arbitrary character --in place of B, a
*, etc., etc. Let an entire alphabet be made in this manner, and then
let this alphabet be used in any piece of writing. This writing can be
read by means of a proper method. Let this be put to the test. Let
any one address us a letter in this way, and we pledge ourselves to
read it forthwith--however unusual or arbitrary may be the characters
employed. " [C.S.Brigham, Edgar Allan Poe's Contributions to
Alexander's Weekly Messenger, American Antiquarian Society,
1943. ]

Between December 1839 and May 1840, Poe appears to have solved all of
the ciphers submitted to Alexander's. He himself claimed that
"out of, perhaps, one hundred ciphers altogether received, there was
only one which we did not immediately succeed in solving. This one we
demonstrated to be an imposition -- that is to see we fully proved it
a jargon of random characters, having no meaning whatsoever."

Scholars who have studied this have concluded that Poe did appear to
meet his challenge. In an article entitled "What Poe Knew About
Cryptography," W.K. Wimsatt of Yale counted 36 ciphers in
Alexander's, and gives the following accounting: Poe printed
the text and solutions to 9 ciphers and he printed the solutions (or
part of the solutions) to 15 ciphers; he simply states that he has
solved 3 ciphers; he states that he did not solve 6 ciphers, which
were defaced, although in one cases he provided a proof that the
submission was not a valid cipher. All of these 34 are believed to be
simple substitution ciphers. In addition, Poe appears to have solved a
cipher which some symbols to stand for more than one letter of the
plain text and in one case a cipher in which 7 different alphabets
were used. In this last case, since we don't have the cipher text
itself, it is believed that a new alphabet was used on each line of
the plain text, rather than a cipher such as Vigenere's.

The following cryptogram printed here occurred in the April 22, 1840 edition of Alexander's.

It happens to be one of the more challenging posers since it has a
couple of instances in which the the same cipher symbol stands for two
different plaintext letters. However, upon solving this cryptogram,
Poe remarked,

For further study and enjoyment

Cryptogram
Tool. Try your hand at deciphering the above cryptogram with the
help of this simple Java applet. This requires a Java-compatible
browser, and you'll have to copy and paste the message into the applet's
text window. HINT: Be aware that there's no perfect substitution for
this cryptogram because there are a couple of instances in which
the same cipher symbol stands for two different plaintext letters.

CryptoToolJ.
If you have trouble solving the Poe cryptogram, try using CryptoToolJ,
which will attempt to solve it for you.

For more on Poe's interest in cryptography, see David Kahn's The
Codebreakers (Macmillan, 1967). See also C.S.Brigham, Edgar
Allan Poe's Contributions to Alexander's Weekly Messenger,
American Antiquarian Society, 1943.

The Gold Bug. Read Poe's famous story The Gold Bug. You can
downlad a free copy from The Oxford
Text Archive. David Kahn states, "...literary cryptography took
its greatest step forward with the work of Edgar Allan Poe, whose
story 'The Gold Bug' remains unequaled as a work of fiction turning
upon a secret message."